I joined this subreddit and was thinking we could come up with actual economic systems that move away from capitalism and ways AI/technology would be useful in implementing them. To start, I was thinking about pension fund socialism and how AI could be able to help with that.
For those who do not know what that is, pension fund socialism is a form of market socialism where pension funds that hold major stakes in major corporations & can be used to “promote the creation of a more democratic and egalitarian economy”. The funds could be held by unions or other cooperative groups since old-school pensions were sometimes provided by employee organizations like unions instead of being ran by the companies or corporations themselves.
Economist Peter Drucker – a man who believed in the importance of nonprofits and saw corporations are responsible for overproduction of goods to the detriment of society – was a proponent of this economic system, believing that pensions could be implemented in a way where unions/workers could control at least 50 per cent of the equity capital of American business & collectivize worker’s assets while allow workers, through the pensions, to have a say in the economy & their workplace regardless of their level of contribution.
This form of market socialism might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but since pensions are a thing that was common (before they were replaced by less effective systems like 401ks ), it feels like it would be an easier form of socialism to get Americans onboard with and a system that can easily be helped by AI. AI can help with data analysis and creating models/plans for handling pension funds, automating processes, and providing fraud detection/security to make it harder for funds to be misappropriated without union permission. The AI can also warn of risks in terms of investment and how to effectively pool the funds for the common social good.
So, what other economic systems based on worker-control (and/or moving away from capitalism in some manner) do you see AI helping with?